Fiamm Horn Install

Fiamm Horn Installation

You folks know very well that there are usually a number of ways to do a job. I'm not saying that this is the absolute best way of installing these horns but it's the way I did it. If you have suggestions on how to improve on this, please start a discussion in the General Tech area and maybe we can all learn something. That being said...this is my story.

Though this installation was done on my second generation Venture, I'm sure that much of the wiring and etc. would apply to the first generation or the Royal Star also.

I ordered the chrome horns with the intention of mounting them somewhere on the side of the bike. I just couldn't find a place that I like though so finally decided to just mount them inside the faring. Obviously I would probably not have bought chrome had I known that I was going to just hide them anyway.

The first thing you have to do of course is split the faring. If you have never done that, I posted a separate write-up on my procedure for doing it under the Second Generation topic of the Technical Library.

Once you are inside the faring, the rest is fairly straight forward. The particular horns came with some chrome straps about 3" long with a hole in each end. As you can see, I utilized holes that were already in the part of the faring frame that holds the speedometer unit. There are two holes there that are not being used. There are rubber pads in the holes but I just popped them out and put them away in case I ever need them. This is a steel frame and is very solid.

These horns are actually self grounding through the mounting lug but the bracket that I bolted them to is painted so it was a matter of scraping off the paint or using a ground wire. I decided to use the ground wire. Why create a place for corrosion to start by scraping off the paint. I simply used a piece of #14 wire with ring terminals on both ends. Just under the audio unit on the right side is a ground wire and I just connected two new ones to the same screw...one going to each horn.

Now...the horns came with a relay and if you are installing heavy duty horns, you certainly want to use a relay. As you can see, I simply removed one of the screw that holds the audio unit and bolted the relay right to it. Very simple.

http://www.venturerider.org/horns/relay.jpg

The white wire that you see going to the relay is the main power for the horns. The instructions say to simply run a wire to the battery through an inline fuse that you'll have to purchase elsewhere. There is nothing wrong with that but I didn't have an inline fuse and didn't want to go to the store. After thinking about it, I decided to power it off the same circuit that powers the 12V receptacle. Now if you use the receptacle for heated clothing or other heavy duty items, you will want to do as the instructions say and run a wire to the battery. In my case though, I only use the receptacle to power my IPOD MP3 player and it pulls hardly any amps at all. So...I simple ran the white wire from the relay across to the wire going to the receptacle and spliced it in.

If you take this route, you WILL want to go to a bigger fuse on that circuit. The receptacle is fused for 5 amps and they horns call for 10. This fuse is located inside the lower left cowling as indicated by the next picture.

http://www.venturerider.org/horns/fuses.jpg

They are marked inside the lid of the fuse box so simply remove the 5 amp fuse and replace with a 10 amp.

So... you now have main power to the relay and the horn is grounded. All you need to do now is connect the relay to your horn button. So...where the heck do you do that? Well....If you look carefully at the next picture, you will see where I tied into a pink wire. This is the wire that comes off the horn button. It did go into the plastic connector you see just below it but I simply pulled it out of the connector, cut the end off and crimpled it to my wire going to the relay. So now the horn button can trigger the relay and all is great.

One note. I had intended to leave the original horns connected as well as the new ones. Due to the circuit feeding back through the original horns though, I found that the new horns would honk when the key was in the accessory position. Rather than mess with isolating them and due to the fact that you can't hear them anyway, I just decided to heck with them.

Here are pictures of the left and right sides.

http://www.venturerider.org/horns/left.jpg

http://www.venturerider.org/horns/right.jpg

My opinion of these horns? They are MUCH better than the stock horns. I can assure you that you will be heard when you set these things off. Even still though...I expected a bit more. I mean...if you run up behind somebody and press the horn button...they are going to JUMP...but..they probably won't wet their pants. I wanted them to wet their pants....maybe I expected too much. Anyway, if I had to rate them between 1 and 10...I would probably give them about a 7. If I had it to do over again...I would do so...but if I was putting them in the faring, I would just go with the round plain type...not these chrome models.

Don Nelson